Art

Here we glimpse a few images from Hawthorne's life and
writings. Some notes by an amateur are supplied as text
descriptions for the blind, or those of us who look but do
not see. (Lynx users may press the slash key and enter the
string Text with an capital T to go to the next
text description, which ends with the word END.)

Help: Each piece of art is listed
separately, with an inline thumbnail (visible only with
graphic browsers, not Lynx--there is no ALT text because
the next words identify it), source, and notes. Clicking on
the thumbnail or the anchor that says
"load" opens, or attempts to transfer, the full
picture or graphic file (which may take a long time,
depending on your connection speed and bandwidth). Sizes of
JPEG and GIF images are listed in kilobytes so you can
predict the wait. All picture files are situated in the
parent directory "../pix/", but this site does not
permit anonymous ftp; you may save images to your own
computer by right-clicking on the thumbnail from some
browsers. Please respect copyrights, where these are given.
Note: we have made this page background white to try to
reproduce the art better, instead of the usual minty-green
of the rest of the Hawthorne pages.

No discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne portraits would be
complete without reference to the excellent book,
Portraits of Nathaniel Hawthorne: An
Iconography, by Rita K. Gollin, Northern Illinois University
Press, 1983 [Goll83].

A collection of book cover illustrations over the
years would be quite instructive. The changing view
of Hester would reveal much of our history. One collection
was on the web long ago but has disappeared.

"When I first saw the room, [the study
of the Old Manse, 1842] its walls were blackened with the
smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the
grim prints of Puritan ministers that hung around. These
worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or, at least,
like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly with
the devil, that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been
imparted to their own visages." [The Old Manse: today's viewers of
the cleaned portraits would notice the long hair or powdered
wigs and elaborate clothing of these latter-day revivalist
Puritans such as Whitefield. However, the portraits on display
look like frontispieces to books, not paintings or separate
engravings or prints.]

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1840, in an oil-on-canvas painting
by Charles Osgood, courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem,
Mass. Gift of Richard Clarke Manning, 1933. Please license
this image from the museum for any commercial purposes,
instead of attempting to use these online copies, which have
been purposely degraded. Inexpensive posters of this
portrait are also available at the Old Manse and House of
the Seven Gables gift shops. An oil copy by an unknown
artist is at the Turner Street house, and shows a little
more hair on top. Another oil copy, by Clive Edwards, was
purchased by the Salem Atheneum in 1930 [Goll83 22], but we haven't seen
it.

[Text description:] Hawthorne portrait by Osgood is to
his waist against a green background. A handsome man with a
shaven face, he looks a little younger than his 36 years.
He is dressed in his favorite black with a cape-shouldered
double-breasted formal jacket and black bow tie fastened
high with a white shirtfront and high collar showing. His
dark hair spills over the tops of his ears and is full in
back, but a little receding in front. His piercing eyes,
gazing to his right, somewhat pensively, draw your full
attention. A close examination of the original painting,
which has been cleaned, reveals the eyes to be definitely
gray or hazel-gray (Rita Gollin says
"hazel"--personal communication, 1996),
but not blue, as in some reproductions of this painting.
END.

[Text description:] This engraving looks like the
portrait except Hawthorne appears younger, with more hair
and fuller lips.
END.

Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Engraved portrait by Thomas Phillibrown,
after an 1850 painting by Cephas Giovanni Thompson.
Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1854. MA 611. Courtesy The
Pierpont Morgan Library. This is the picture most readers
had of Hawthorne, since it was the first one to appear in
his books.

[Text description:] Hawthorne looks relaxed but serious.
There is something about the arched left eyebrow, and right
side of his face completely shaded, that makes him look
rather sinister, stern, or superior. He seems to have lost
some of the open innocence of the earlier portrait.
END.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1860 (3KB) engraving
(b&w) etched by S. A. Schoff, from a photograph taken in
1860 in London by Mayal[l], reproduced in volume 2 of Julian
Hawthorne's book, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His
Wife, 1884. (See Gollin's book for a discussion
and clarification of the Mayal photograph controversy.)

[Text description:] Fine engraving of bust of Nathaniel Hawthorne gazing
piercingly to his left, with deep dark eye sockets (not gray
eyes here). He has a fierce, drooping Civil War mustache,
matching his thick black eyebrows,
but less hair on top than a few years before. His hair is
still over his ears, and he is wearing his customary black
suit with a black bow tie and a white shirt.
END.

Nathaniel
Hawthorne, 1862, in an oil painting by Emanuel
Leutze. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, gift of
Andrew W. Mellon. Hawthorne mentions sitting for Leutze
during his visit to Washington, D.C., written up in
"Chiefly About War Matters."

[Text description:] A flattering portrait of Hawthorne
two years before he died. He has a deep brown moustache
without any white hairs showing, and a little wave at the
top of his high forehead. His cheeks are not hollow as in
photographs near this time. He looks right at you with
those wonderful gray or hazel eyes, leaning back a little
and seeming almost frighteningly like he is appraising you.
END.

Nathaniel Hawthorne at
the age of 58. Etched by S. A. Schoff. From a photograph
taken in Boston. Opposite page 300, volume 2, Julian
Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife,
1884.
(We lost our scan from Julian's book and have substituted
another from Rita Gollin's book here.)

[Text description:] Sophia Peabody contemplates the viewer with
her large, placid eyes. She is quite plain even in this
portrait. Her nose and philtrum are a little too large and
she looks as if she might need glasses. Her hair and dress
are not at all fashionable; she wears no jewellery (is that
a locket or a high collar?). Even though she is a dentist's
daughter, we cannot see her teeth. She will be the perfect
wife for Nathaniel. END.

[Text description:] Bold Daniel looks like his son
Nathaniel Hathorne and grandson Nathaniel
Hawthorne, with somewhat sad eyes and no smile; hair is a
little receding but worn long over the ears. He looks a
little shorter and pudgier than them, though. The original
miniature is very fine and was much admired by Hawthorne and
his son. END.

Capt. Nathaniel
Hathorne, (father to the author Nathaniel, who
died when his son was four) etching, 1884, by S. A. Schoff,
opposite page 36, volume 1 of Julian Hawthorne's
Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, 1884, from a
miniature in possession of the author.

[Text description:] Hawthorne's father is a
handsome young fellow, thinner than
his father Daniel, not smiling, with somewhat sad eyes and
level eyebrows; hair is a little receding but worn long over
the ears. The original miniature is very fine and was much
admired by Hawthorne and his son Julian. END.

[Text description:] Poor copy of engraving of Franklin Pierce, frontispiece
to Hawthorne's campaign biography of the 14th president of
the United States and a fellow alumnus of Bowdoin College.
Pierce looks rather complacently right at the viewer, not
smiling. He has curly hair and rather bushy eyebrows. From
his looks, he could well command the respect of a general,
as he was. Deep crow's-feet folds at the corners of his
eyes make him look genial and trustworthy, as a presidential
candidate should look. END.

Autograph manuscript journal,
dated 1841-1852, in the Pierpont Morgan collection, New
York. Courtesy of New York University: Only this
leaf, containing the title and table of contents, survives
from Hawthorne's manuscript of The
Scarlet Letter (published in March, 1850, by
Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston). According to his friend
Annie Adams Fields (with whom he entrusted the manuscript of
The House of the Seven
Gables), Hawthorne burned the remainder of the
manuscript of The Scarlet Letter, returned
after publication. "I threw that in the fire," he
told her, "put it up the chimney long ago."
71. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan with the Wakeman
collection, 1909. (12KB)Load
original file at NYU (broken link)or load JPG copy at this site --
(sltoc.jpg, 421x576, jpg, 16.7m, 62KB)

[Text
description:] Manuscript on blue paper sheet with cursive
writing and roman numeral headings of Scarlet Letter table
of contents, just as it was printed, without any blots or
scratching-outs, and including the introductory, The Custom
House. The paper has some brown spots from age. The
heading is just "Contents," without a title. Hawthorne's
writing gets larger and slants up at right toward the bottom
of page. Pages for chapters are not numbered (just ditto
marks), but there is no room for the additional tales
mentioned in the introduction, and they are not listed.
Notice Hawthorne's large second letter "s" in
"ss", and the intricate capital "A" done without
the pen's leaving the paper. END.

Old
Manse
manuscript letter from Nathaniel Hawthorne, July
15, 1852, Concord, from facsimile reproduced as plate
opposite page 224 in 1896 book by G. P. Putnam, Little
Journeys to the Homes of American Authors. [Load 9KB b&w GIF file,
568x395x2]

[Text description:] Autograph letter from Nathaniel
Hawthorne dated July 15, '52, Concord. "I passed by
the Old Manse, a few days ago, for the first time in nearly
seven years. Notwithstanding the repairs, it looked very
much as of yore except that a large window had been opened
on the roof, through which light and cheerfulness probably
shine into the duskiest part of the dim garret of my own
time. The trees of the avenue--how many leaves have fallen
since I last saw them!--had an aspect of new ?freshness,
which disappointed me; either..." The signature is on
the side, "Truly yours, Nathl Hawthorne." END.

Snow-image engraving
frontispiece from Legends of the Province House and
Other Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1883, 1900, in the
Riverside Aldine Classic series and Riverside Edition). The
brown-inked (blue in some Riverside editions) photogravure
is signed "CHURCH." but no credit is given
elsewhere in the book. It appears this is the work of
illustrator Frederic S. Church.

[Text description:] The snow-image is a young girl
described in the story of the same
name, standing
in the snow feeding little snow-birds from her hands, with
her long robe and long hair blowing sinuously in the wind.
A white ground and leafless twigs and background trees
indicate the winter. She seems innocent and happy to play
in the snow, not at all cold in spite of her thin dress and
bare feet. END.

Faun of Praxiteles
marble statue in the Capitoline Museum, Rome, Italy. This
may be a copy, and may not be by Praxiteles, the 4th century
B.C. Athenian Greek sculptor. Hawthorne greatly preferred
this one to a similar copy in the Vatican he also saw in 1858. (1KB, b&w photo, from
Alinari-Art Reference Bureau, no copyright listed.)

[Text description:] Hawthorne gives a
good description in the first
chapter of The Marble Faun of the statue of
the Faun of Praxiteles. It is not an animal but rather
an man with a few animal features. From the
photograph one cannot tell if the ears indeed are furry or
pointed, since a mass of curly hair obscures them. (But if
you read the preface and conclusion carefully, you will see
that many readers mistakenly took his words literally, not
as the Romance he intended, so does it really make a
difference if they, and Donatello's, are furry or not?)
Also, the statue now has a leaf covering the figure's
private area, not mentioned by Hawthorne, who reportedly
disapproved of nudity in statues. END.

[Text description:] The Salem Custom House is seen, with
the large eagle like a black bat over the door, and showing
the tower addition. A merchant cutter is docked parallel
with Derby Street to the left, and no buildings on Derby
Wharf are seen to the right. Surveyor Hawthorne's office
was to the left of the door, and you can see the building in
the rear, where Hawthorne wrote
he found the scarlet letter. END.

Hilda's Tower in the
Via Portoghese, Rome, Italy, etched by E. H. Garrett, title
page illustration from volume 2 of Julian Hawthorne's
Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, 1884. This
tower was seen by Hawthorne in Rome in 1858 (see his journal entry) and was used in his
novel The Marble Faun as
the residence and studio of the innocent New England artist,
Hilda. (2KB, b&w engraving)

[Text description:] Hilda's Tower is
mentioned and lightly sketched in words in chapter 6 of The Marble
Faun. The engraving shows the top two-thirds of
the tower, the Mansard-roofed palace behind it and halfway
up it, and the taller structures on the sides of the street
that ends in the small square in front of the tower. The
street level and first floors are not shown. At the top of
the tower is seen a large shrine with a statue of the Virgin
with large rays projecting from it. A large lantern is
placed at the corner of the tower roof, just facing the
statue. The tower is square with a heavy, arched,
buttressed top floor and big windows, including shutters on
a large single, lower window. Doves are flying around the
picture, especially the top of the tower. The engraving
does not show battlements on the tower roof edge, though
they might exist at the corners; the original engraving's
scale is quite small, only a few inches on each side. END.

Mature
black ash trees lined the avenue from
Monument Street to the Old Manse
(about 1909). (6KB, b&w photo, from the American Memory
Project, Library of Congress.)

"The glimmering shadows, that lay half-asleep
between the door of the house and the public highway, were a
kind of spiritual medium, seen through which, the edifice
had not quite the aspect of belonging to the material world.
Certainly it had little in common with those ordinary
abodes, which stand so imminent upon the road that every
passer-by can thrust his head, as it were, into the domestic
circle."
[ The Old
Manse]

The black ash tree prefers low-lying or swampy areas,
such as near the Concord River here. Its wood is fairly
light and soft but is used for interior paneling and for
basket weaving. It is often confused with the hickory tree,
as it has a peeling, cork-like bark (it is a member of the
olive family), but its leaves are opposite, not alternate,
and it drops winged samaras, not nuts. When Sophia's father
visited, he was reported to have picked up fallen branches,
a never-ending job under black ashes. (Perhaps the trees
blew down finally in the hurricane of 1938.) Black ash is
too light for good firewood, which the Old Manse needed in
abundance. The present black locust (acacia) trees serve
that purpose better. Load photo (ashmanse.jpg,
photograph, b&w, 521x420jpeg, 256shades, 52KB)

[Text
description:] Large, thick trees line each side of a mowed
avenue, and arch overhead like a cathedral. The lower story
of the house is just visible at the end, or at least the
door, two windows on the left, and one on the right, about
120 feet (40 meters) away, as the road curves to the left to
what looks like a carriage house. The viewpoint is just
inside the gate, not seen. The wheel-track is a lighter
shade and possibly of gravel. It seems to be a sunny day in
late spring or summer, about noon, but it feels
cool. The photograph cannot show any glimmering, but the
light is indeed shadowy and half-asleep. This would be a
good scene to visit--but it can be done only in the
spiritual medium of your imagination now.
END OF TEXT DESCRIPTIONS.